The surface of
Beltrami County is sharply divided into two areas
by the southern shore of glacial Lake Agassiz
which passes through the county east and west, a
few miles south of Lower Red Lake. North of this
shoreline, in the area once occupied by the
glacial lake, the surface is fairly even and
level, without lakes and with few streams, but
with frequent muskeg swamps of varying character,
containing growths of tamarack, cedar, spruce,
moss, and grass. The area south of the glacial
shoreline is more elevated, much rougher,
traversed by moraines, cut by streams and
spangled with lakes. It was once covered with a
heavy forest.
Today a Continental Divide
marker is located twelve miles north of Bemidji in Beltrami
County.
The signboard indicates that from this point, at
an elevation of 1,397 feet, lakes and streams
flow north 3,200 miles to the Hudson Bay, and
south 1,800 miles into the Gulf of Mexico.
Artificial earth mounds and
primitive village sites along lakes and streams
show that for a long period, this region was
occupied by an aboriginal people. Several of the
mounds, large in size, were scattered along a
portage from Lake Irving to the Mississippi
River. Camp sites have been found at the south
end of Lake Bemidji and several mounds are within
the limits of the city of Bemidji. There is
evidence of an aboriginal portage from the north
end of Lake Bemidji to Turtle River. Camp sites,
mounds and stone dams from the outlet of Lake
Bemidji to Tascodias Lake (now called Wolf Lake)
show further evidence of an early people. A camp
site at the mouth of the Turtle River is at a
place where ancient man portaged north to Red
Lake on south to Leech Lake. Village sites and
mounds have also been found at Lake Andrusia and
at Cass Lake.
About the middle of the
eighteenth century, the Chippewa, pushing their
way westward from the Lake Superior Region, drove
the Sioux from their villages and hunting grounds
in northern Minnesota. The Sioux made their last
stand at Leech Lake, Finally, perhaps about 1748,
they decided to abandon that lake also.
The Chippewa of the Mississippi
ceded a large tract of this land to the United
States in 1855. In 1863, the Red Lake and Pembina
Bands of the Chippewa also ceded a large tract.
Other treaties in 1864, 1867, and 1889
finally reduced the Red Lake Reservation to
663,452 acres. The reservation land outside this
area was opened to settlement in 1896. The Red
Lake Reservation was further reduced to its
present size in 1902, approximately 1,250 square
miles.
In 1873, the Red Lake Indian
Agency was established with 17140 Indians on the
Reservation. In 1939, there were 2,192 Indians
enrolled at the Red Lake agency and in 1971, the
number had grown to 3,100.
Fur traders established posts
in the area of this county in the later part of
the eighteenth century. Before 1784, James Grant
occupied a post on the northeast shore of Upper
Red Lake. About 1785, there seems to have been a
post on the east side of Lake Bemidji. In 1832, a
post was situated on the west bank, somewhat
north of the entrance of the Mississippi River.
French fur traders called Lake Bemidji "Lac
Traverse", meaning "easy
traveling", because of the sand bar across
it. Jean Baptiste Cadotte spent the winter of
1794-95 on the eastern shore of Red Lake, where
an early British post was located. The Northwest
Company had a post somewhere on the east shore of
Upper or Lower Red Lake about 1790. By 1826, the
American Fur Company had established a post.
One of the earliest explorers
of the region was David Thompson, a surveyor and
astronomer. In 1797, he set out on a tour of the
Northwest Company's posts, traveling from
Winnipeg to the site of Thief River Falls, then
down the Clearwater and Red Lake Rivers to Red
Lake, thence by Turtle Lake River to Cass Lake
and down the Mississippi. William Morrison passed
through the area at various times from 1802 to
1812 and visited Lac La Biche (Elk Lake), now
Itasca, in 1804. Cass Lake was the terminus of
Zebulon Pike's journey in 1806. In 1820, Lewis
Cass reached the same lake which he, like Pike,
thought was the source of the Mississippi River.
Cass crossed the lake to the entrance of Turtle
River.
Giacomo Constantino Beltrami,
an Italian explorer, passed through this country
in 1823. At Fort Snelling, he had joined a
military expedition and traveled up the Minnesota
River and down the Red River. Leaving his
companions at Pembina, he struck through the
wilderness to the southeast accompanied by a
half-breed interpreter and two Chippewa Indians.
From the confluence of the Thief River and Red
Lake River he reached Red Lake by way of the
latter stream.
Proceeding southeast from
there, he passed through Mud (Puposky) Lake and
them reached Lake Julia, which he named and which
he thought was the source of the Mississippi
River. From Lake Julia, Beltrami reached Cass
Lake by way of Turtle Lake and River, and them
proceeded down the Mississippi River to Fort Snelling.
In 1832, Henry R. Schoolcraft,
who had been with Cass in 1820, was sent to the
region to bring peace between the Sioux and
Chippewa. At Cass Lake, Chief Ozawindib
(Yellowhead) offered to guide him to the
headwaters of the Mississippi, A party of sixteen
persons and five canoes left Cass Lake and came
to a body of water which Schoolcraft named Lake
Andrusia. They came next to Wolf (Pamitascodia)
Lake and them to Lake Bemidji, called
Pemidjigamaug by the Indians, but named Queen
Ann's Lake by Schoolcraft. The expedition crossed
Lake Bemidji and Lake Irving and ascended a fork
of the Mississippi, now known as Schoolcraft or
Yellowhead River. Two lakes, Marquette and
LaSalle, were reached before coming to
Kubba-Kunna, which Schoolcraft called Lake
Plantagenet. A portage of six miles from the head
of the Yellowhead brought the party to Lake
Omushkos, the Chippewa name of Elk. Schoolcraft
called it Itasca. Four years later, in 1836, Joseph
N. Nicollet examined the sources of the
Mississippi.
A mission station and school
were opened at Red Lake in 1843 under the
auspices of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign
Missions. Sponsorship was soon transferred to the
American Missionary Association, a Congregational
organization. In 1858, a Catholic mission, now
known as St. Mary's, was established at Red Lake.
Permanent settlement did not
begin in what is now Beltrami County until late
in the 1880's and early 1890's. M. E. and G. E.
Carson came to Lake Bemidji in the spring of
1888, and Freeman Doud and Thomas Joy in 1890.
Others moved in about 1893. About thirty
families, mostly Scandinavians, settled in the
eastern part of Bemidji Township. Other families
settled around Lake Bemidji and along the
Mississippi River. From this nucleus the settlers
spread northward.
Beltrami County was created by
an act of the Legislature on February 28, 1866.
It included, in general, the southern two-thirds
of the present county of Beltrami and part of the
present county of Clearwater.
Territory north of this area to
the Canadian border was added in 1879. Government
survey lines moved the boundary south from the
Mississippi River in 1889. In 1896, a number of
townships were taken from the northern part of
Beltrami County and added to Roseau County. The
next change was in 1902, when thirty townships
were taken out of Beltrami to form the new county
of Clearwater. And, in 1921, the northern part of
the county was established as Lake of the Woods
County.
Beltrami County was attached to
Becker for record and judicial purposes for many
years. It existed in a semi-organized state until
May 17, 1897, when the first full list of county
officers was appointed. On July 10, 1900, five
commissioner districts were created and five
commissioners took their seats on January 8,
1901.
In 1897, the board of county
commissioners located the county seat at Bemidji.
Beltrami County has a land area of 1,608,518.71
acres or, 3,055 square miles. There are more than
150 lakes of twenty acres or larger, and Upper
and Lower Red Lakes are the largest inland bodies
of water wholly within any one state ( 440 square
miles).
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